Albanese urged to release security think tanks review, maintain fixed funding
It's been more than three months since the government was handed the independent review into national security think tanks.
When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s department quietly announced a review into federal funding for national security think tanks and universities at the start of this year, it was widely seen as targeting the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Senior figures in the government were alive to the criticism. After all, the “anti-China research” of ASPI featured on the infamous list of 14 grievances that Chinese diplomats handed to an Australian journalist in 2020. Any move to gut the think tank — which last year received $8.1 million a year from the federal government, accounting for about half of its revenue — would be seen as a capitulation to Beijing.
The man who led the review, former DFAT secretary and current chancellor of the University of Queensland Peter Varghese, denied this was the intent when he spoke to think tanks earlier this year to gauge their views on how the funding structure could be improved. Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) first assistant secretary Lachlan Colquhoun also told a Senate estimates hearing that “no single factor” was driving the review and it was supported by multiple departments.
But months after Varghese handed his findings to PM&C secretary Glyn Davis in August, the national security think tank community remains none the wiser on the contents of the review.
